Literary Birthday – 20 January – R. A. Salvatore

Happy Birthday, R. A. Salvatore, born 20 January 1959.

10 Quotes

A world without dragons is a world not worth living in.
I don’t often know exactly what’s coming next, and that makes it more fun. And you know, for me, this entire genre is all about that; it’s all about having fun and getting away from the mundane world for just a little while.
If you can quit, then quit. If you can’t quit, you’re a writer.
Because in fantasy perhaps more than in any other genre, the character is rewarded for making the right choices and punished for making the bad. Ask Boromir.
Whenever you’re writing a book or creating a movie or a game, your first task is to get the reader to suspend disbelief, to buy into the logic and boundaries of your world, even though those boundaries might include things like dragons and magic.
Writing is an incredibly lonely job.
No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith.
To any intelligent being, there is no emotion more important than hope. Individually or collectively, we must hope that the future will be better than the past, that our offspring, and theirs after them, will be a bit closer to an ideal society, whatever our perception of that might be.
Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.
I won’t hold any illusions of changing the world or any such nonsense. But maybe, just maybe, I’m helping someone else change his or her life a little bit for the better, even if it just means giving someone a magical place in which to hide.

R. A. Salvatore is an American author best known for The DemonWars Saga, beginning with The Demon Awakens, and The Dark Elf Trilogy novels. He has sold more than 15 million copies of his books and twenty-two of his titles have been New York Times best-sellers.

Image: Author Website